AMD has launched its much anticipated FX series of desktop CPUs using the Bulldozer architecture. Codenamed Zambezi, the 32nm chips represent the company's top offerings for enthusiasts. Bulldozer is the first complete redesign of AMD’s processor architecture since the K7 Athlon was launched in 1999, and features significant improvements in manufacturing, design, and cost reduction.

The drive for efficiency and greater instructions per clock (IPC) was the original impetus for Bulldozer. Long gone are the days of simply increasing clock speed for easy performance gains. AMD and Intel have been increasing the number of CPU cores, but that takes up a lot of die space. Intel has been pushing HyperThreading as its way of maximizing efficiency, and is pretty good when a CPU stalls due to a cache miss, branch misprediction, or data dependency. However, AMD has decided to go a markedly different route.

Each Bulldozer module provides an independent, dedicated integer and scheduler unit for each core. A single floating point unit is shared between the two cores in a Bulldozer module, along with the fetch and decode units and a 2MB L2 cache. There is a 16KB L1 data cache per core, as well as a 64KB L1 instruction cache per module. This adds up to an impressive 128KB L1 data cache, 256KB L1 instruction cache, and 8MB L2 cache for an eight-core FX processor.

Theoretically, this should provide much better performance than HyperThreading, which functions best when there are a lot of CPU stalls because all threads must compete for available execution resources. HyperThreading increases performance by approximately 30% at a cost of 5% extra die space, but the second integer core in Bulldozer could almost double integer performance at a die cost of only 12%.

The Bulldozer architecture was originally supposed to debut in the first half of 2009, and would've enabled AMD to compete toe-to-toe with Intel on pure performance, rather than on pricing alone. However, various financial difficulties and a major recession led to delays, while the divestment of its manufacturing capacity into GlobalFoundries led to some technical delays. Almost three years late, the design has been updated significantly in order to accommodate the latest technologies and manufacturing processes.

FX chips are built by GlobalFoundries on its 32nm Silicon on insulator (SOI) process. The eight core Zambezi chips have around two billion transistors and a die size of approximately 315mm2. An integrated northbridge unit supplies an 8MB L3 cache, four 16-bit HyperTransport 3.0 links, and the integrated memory controller. Depending on the model, it runs at either 2.2Ghz or 2.0GHz. The most significant update to the integrated dual-channel memory controller is native support for DDR3 memory at 1866MHz (DDR3-1866/PC3-14900). ECC memory is still supported; a welcome relief to those who are planning on FX-based workstations, as Intel only supports ECC memory on its much more expensive Xeon workstations.

There are instruction sets aplenty: SSE3, SSE4.1/4.2, AES, and AVX. AMD is also introducing support for FMA4 and XOP. FMA4 can be thought of as specific instructions designed to speed up Fused Multiply–Add (FMA) operations. XOP is a revision of the SSE5 instruction set, redesigned to be more compatible with Intel's AVX.

The four new FX chips being launched today will require motherboards with socket AM3+, but the good news is that enthusiasts will be able to upgrade to a top of the line FX-8150 for $245. The FX-8120 will be available for $205, while the six-core FX-6100 will be priced at $165. The four-core FX-4100 with a 95W TDP is available for only $115. All FX chips are unlocked, and AMD has already set the Guinness World Record for the “Highest Frequency of a Computer Processor” by overclocking a Zambezi chip to 8.429 GHz.

Several speed bumps are already planned for Q1 and Q2 of 2012 as GlobalFoundries 32nm process matures. However, Bulldozer won't move into into the mainstream until the Piledriver refresh next year. Trinity cores featuring DirectX 11 Fusion technology will replace Llano chips, while the 10-core Komodo processor will supplant Zambezi as the FX flagship.

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Leaving the obvious dud the FX chip is aside, the Anandtech crew have always been known to be such an intel lover boys, and boy if it shows if you compare their review to those found in virtually every other site out there.

That might be true, but the FX is too slow in benchmarks for the gap to be explained away by favoritism. I myself have always preferred and supported AMD (running a phenom 955 right now), and i had bought my latest mobo with a view to upgrading to bulldozer, but even i have to say that BD is a massive disappointment. I hope next year's refresh gives us more than just a slight performance boost.

You shouldn't be disappointed, most of us expected this to be the case. An overclock record doesn't mean anything in the real world.

AMD CPU's haven't been relevant in a REALLY long time. Yet there are those who will continue to make the price vs performance argument and stay "loyal". The real shocker here is the top FX chip is going for more than an i5-2500k which just trounces it.

If this is the best AMD can do now, what's going to happen when Ivy Bridge comes out? The gap will be insurmountable for AMD.

Repeating it over and over won't make it true. AMD hasn't been relevant at the top-end of the consumer market in a long time. That's less than 5% of the market. It's been the better choice in most other segments for years.

quote: AMD hasn't been relevant at the top-end of the consumer market in a long time.

Excuse me, please define "top-end"? The last three generation of new AMD chips have roughly been the equivalent of Intel's older mid-grade chips. So no, we're not even comparing top lines here. It's not like you have to buy an Extreme Edition CPU to beat whatever AMD has out, not even close.

Top-end? Convince me why I should pay more for a Bulldozer when a cheaper i5 or i7 is STILL better in every way.

Maybe in the past you guys could make the price vs. performance angle stick. But Bulldozer has changed all that.

it does not make sense in desktops. buying the x4 athlon/corei and gpu separately (or a mobile gpu built onto a microatx board) is the better buy, especially if you buy a full sized card. fusion is overpriced on desktops.

What does the CPU in Passmark users' systems have to do with anything?? We already know AMD's marketshare is dwarfed by Intel and always has been (even when half of Passmark users had AMD, do you have any representative sample figures, or just ones with a self-selecting bias?)

Only 5% of the CPUs shipped are i7 or Bulldozer-class. I think we saw numbers that said Intel i7 was something on the order of 2-3% of Intel CPUs shipped. That's the space where AMD can't compete, and it's miniscule (highly profitable though!)

It hasn't really been competitive in anything but the bottom end for a good part of a decade now.

magny has the benefit of being a simple socket drop for servers, but the performance is just horrendous compared to similarly priced xeons. per core performance is really lacking in all of their chips, making their x6 the only real competitive product.

the rest are simply priced down as low as possible. i think people are a little confused and believe the CPU performance is good, while playing GPU bound video games. benefit of phenom for the average consumer is simply that you'll be able to boot your computer and run games off GPU. otherwise their cpu performance is anything but stellar.

Have you used AMD proccessors lately? I build 40-50 systems a year.. and have used practically every desktop CPU on the market. CPU performance is quite stellar over all but when you factor in Intel's products it doesn't quite measure up. Still most of us could easily get by (yes even for gaming) on a lowly $60 cpu quite nicely.

It's also only been 5 years since Intel launched the Core2 so ..not quite the better part of a decade.

precisely, that's why I said "leaving the dud aside". Other sites like legitreviews, thg or hard forum were so much more benign, empathizing not only on the weaknesses but also on the strengths, while at the same time acknowledging this is a huge disappointment for the industry in general.

Also nearly every other site bothered to get a watercooling of their own and make a detailed OC article, anand instead explained that they didn't have the amd sanctioned cooler at the time.

wtf?

No one in their sane mind would deny this is a failure, although not total as it touches the top end SB chips with multi threading applications, and only the most rancid intel fanboys won't realize that lack of competence for intel will hurt them in the end.

But it isn't competitive. It's overclocked to 4.6ghz (400mhz off turbo spec, 1ghz off stock spec) on those water cooled tests, and, well, it includes water cooling. how is it ethical to compare a watercooled, overclocked CPU to an aircooled CPU? intel's stock coolers are also tiny and hardly beasts at heat dissipation.

Then you have the threaded tests, where the gulftown/2600k/x6 end up in higher positions overall than the bulldozer. bulldozer seems to be incredibly fast at transcoding, but in other tests its slower or merely on par.

I'm pretty sure everyone agrees that intel needs competition. In that case, why the hell would we support AMD for pushing out this dud? If they shrank thuban they would've came out with a more competitive product.

I agree with you 99%, ethics are called for in here, but not for comparing air coolers to water coolers, the cpu just need higher speeds, being that a defect or not, and amd themselves are intending to sell watercoolers and/or include them on their top skus, so reviewing OC capabilities with self contained water coolers were in place, so much that anand is probably the only site that didn't.

Remember AMD's claim was 4.6 on air and 5 on water (yes, not that it makes that much of a difference), why the heck not test if their claims were thru or not

Every other site made a decent OC review of FX, anand didn't, the major competing review sites were more benign in remarking not only the shortcoming but also it's very few strengths, anand didn't and that's all I'm saying.

I'd disagree with you on that. I think the problem is that AT generally focuses on the upper end chips instead of the processors that go into $400 computers at BB. Since the release of C2D, Intel has simply been better in that space than AMD. Go back to 2003-2006 and AT blasted Intel for their uncompetitive CPUs.